One Man's Job Hunt

The day had come where I had to commit myself to a serious job hunt.

The reason being: "Get a job, or move out by the end of the month!"

Some people can be so unreasonable about getting the money you owe them for rent, electricity, water, heat. Ah well. I guess I must do what I have to.

The next morning, after sleeping two and a half hours longer than intended, I get dressed, and head out to look for suitable employment. Being an IT person, with experiance and training in several fields of Information Technology, as well as many years of practical experiance, I figured that I should be able to find someone in the paper needing my abilities. So I go to the nearest store that I know has the area newspapers. I pick up one for the town I live in, and one for the next larger town, only about 20 miles away, figuring what the heck, I had a one and a half hour commute when I was living in central California, 20 miles in the midwest shouldn't be to bad!

I go to the coffee shop in the store, get me a morning pick-me-up and a danish, and proceed to look at the help wanted section of my local paper.

When I finally find it, it is only a quarter of a standard newspaper page in size, and 90% of the adds are looking for LPN's and CNA's. Not ONE IT job listed. Damn!

So I look at the other paper, Hmmm... There are 3 ads in this one for IT jobs. Looking deeper into each add, I realize that they all want something I don't have. A Master's degree in IT or IS (Information Technology or Information Systems). Awwww... Crap.

That leaves with with little choice. I'm gonna have to get whatever I can now, and hope the interest in hiring for IT or IS people gets a resurrection soon!

As I leave the coffee shop, I leave both the papers on the table, and from the corner of my eye as I walk out the door nearby, I see a couple of other hungry looking young men fighting over them. Suddenly the coffee shop manager comes out and trys to rescue the poor, unfortunate newspapers, before they are obliterated!

I go ahead and leave the sounds of hissing, swearing and table thumps behind me and head to my car.

"Well, where do I go first?" I think, as I start the car and drive to the exit of the lot. "I know! I'll walk through the downtown area and stop at each place and ASK!"

Oh geez. Talk about a waste of energy and shoe rubber. I forgot, Small Town, USA's downtown area is almost all Mom & Pop type stores or family businesses.

"I'm sorry I just took my daughter in to teach her the business" or "Sorry friend. My son is working the other shift and it only takes one of us per shift to work" were the most common types of answer.

After 28 stores and only 4 answers from them (26 used one of the two above or a close variation on them), I decide that downtown was just NOT the place to look right now. I hop back in the car, and decide to check the mall on the edge of town. They have several large national chain stores, I might have better luck with them.

I drive the 20 minutes to the mall (yet it's only 5 miles from Downtown). As I pull in, I look at the parking lot. Most spaces close to the stores are all full, so I end up parking quite a ways out. I walk into the open air mall, and look around. BuyMore, WohMart, Kruger's, Meyer's! Alright! Two superstores and two grocery store chains are in here! Plus several pharmacies, like WalOrange, and GBZ. WooHoo! I go around to the 6 major stores, before heading over to the 2 department stores in the mall, Steers, and JD Pounds. Oh my! More dismal failures! 3 said "We aren't hiring right now, but you can register on our website and fill out an application, we will let you know if anything comes up in the next 6 months." and the rest just said "No sir, I'm afraid we aren't hiring at the moment. Check back in a couple months"

Great. Let see, I'll either have been on the street for a month or two, or for 5 before they can get around to me. Sheesh!

I got back in the car, where I was immediately asked "Any Luck?" Of course, I said, but it seemed it was all bad luck.

To be continued...